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Nick Mullins, 25, nearly died from MRSA and later lost his vision. Now, he's back to skateboarding.

Nick Mullins, 25, skateboards at Modern Skate & Surf on Wednesday December 21, 2016 in Royal Oak, MI. Mullins was a talented local skateboarder who is well-known for his abilities lost his ability to see after contracting MRSA few years ago.(Photo: Salwan Georges)

George Leichtweis, the owner of Modern Skate & Surf in Royal Oak, says skateboarding is one of the few sports where it’s just you versus yourself — the frustratingly glorious battle of trying, trashing and then landing a trick one day, only to attempt to out-do yourself later.

On any given night in his park there's a cacophonous symphony of urethane wheels slapping concrete floor. More often than not, there’s also the rumbling roll of Nick Mullins’ skateboard as it glides back and forth on the 6-foot ramp.

Modern is the 25-year-old Mullin's known turf, and many skateboarders and inline skaters paused to watch him own it one night last month.

“Now he’s doing just ridiculous stuff,” Leichtweis said. “He does some of the most amazing stuff I’ve ever seen on a halfpipe.”

Mullins has always been good, and he’s been getting better. He attributes that to not having to think so much anymore about how he can’t see his board or the ramp ahead of him.

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Nick Mullins, 25, skateboards at Modern Skate & Surf on Wednesday December 21, 2016 in Royal Oak, MI. Mullins was a talented local skateboarder who is well-known for his abilities but lost his ability to see after contracting MRSA few years ago. (Photo: Salwan Georges, Detroit Free Press)

The Clinton Township resident has been blind for several years now, so skateboarding is back to Mullins versus Mullins instead of Mullins versus blindness, or Mullins versus the near-deadly bacterial infection that left him without his sight.

The battle to regain his footing and his spirit, Mullins said, began with deciding he didn’t want to be defined by an illness anymore.

Even if a skateboarding accident nearly killed him, he wasn’t about to give up the sport that made him excited to be alive.

Down but not out

Mullins figured he was dying when he called his father one summer day in 2009.

By the time a doctor correctly diagnosed him with Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), the then 18-year-old was — in his words — “out.”

After a survival flight from the University of Michigan Health System brought Mullins from a Toledo-area hospital to Ann Arbor, his father, Jimmy Mullins, spent a night in the hospital’s chapel calling family.

He was sure his son wouldn’t make it through the night.

Nick Mullins was in septic shock by the time he hit the intensive care unit.

During the 1½ months he was heavily sedated and undergoing neuromuscular blockades to paralyze him while he received treatment for his community-associated MRSA, he couldn’t have known that he had suddenly become the nationally renowned skateboarder he had always hoped to be.

It would be awhile before he realized that videos of him skateboarding had gone viral and professional skateboarders were rooting for his return.

Even his doctors remember hearing comments from skateboarders across the country and seeing videos of Mullins skating.

“He was just a beautiful, instinctive skater and athlete,” Dr. Pauline Park, codirector of the surgical intensive care unit at the U-M Health System, said. ​

He had just escaped a death sentence, but friends said he was still talking about skateboarding.

“I weighed 90 pounds, just literally didn’t want to talk to anyone. I couldn’t eat. I had to put myself in my own rehab,” Mullins said. “It was difficult, I couldn’t see. Everyone was there for me, but I didn’t even know. I had no idea what happened.”

Mullins was blind — save for a small part of the peripheral vision in his left eye — and weighed less than 90 pounds. He had severe lung damage.

Jimmy said the boy lying in the hospital bed hardly looked like Nick.

Then, a few months later, he saw tough-guy Nick return. The always-independent son was standing on his skateboard in the middle of their family driveway in Toledo.

“That’s when I knew it wasn’t the end,” Mullins said. “I could eat again, I could be myself.”

The accident

Like most of Mullins’ career-defining moments, the fall that could have broken him wound up on YouTube, uploaded by his filmer and friend Steve Staffan in March 2009.

In fewer than 30 seconds, there is the rumble of Mullins’ wheels off-screen, and then a pause as he slides into view — palms-down across rust-colored dust — and lifts himself up, limping slightly as he walks. Mullins thinks that’s how he contracted MRSA.

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Nick Mullins was a talented local skateboarder who is well-known for his abilities but lost his ability to see after contracting MRSA few years ago.(Photo: Salwan Georges, Detroit Free Press)

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Nick Mullins, 25, fixes his hair before skateboarding at Modern Skate & Surf on Wednesday December 21, 2016 in Royal Oak.(Photo: Salwan Georges, Detroit Free Press)

The video, titled “Nick Taking a Bad Slam,” has since garnered more than 72,500 views. It was taken near an industrial warehouse in Maumee, Ohio, while filming a “sponsor-me” tape — basically a plea to skateboarding companies to consider adding him to their team by showcasing his skills.

Mullins said he was trying to go up the bank wall to the guardrail, and then do a flip trick back in. He eventually landed the trick, and it made its way into his video part, though not before he severely scraped his hip along the rust-colored debris.

But falling down, even in a big way, is normal for a skateboarder. Mullins didn’t think much of it at the time, and tries not to dwell on it too much now.

About a week later, he developed a small welt the size of a nickel on his thigh. He figured it was an ingrown hair, or maybe irritated skin, probably caused by him wearing tight jeans. Then one welt became many, and Mullins went to a few different doctors. Each told him he had folliculitis, or irritated hair follicles, and prescribed light antibiotics and painkillers.

Mullins said he was tired, achy and saw “sparkles” in his vision. It felt more like a flu, but without the congestion.

Thinking that those symptoms could have amounted to anything worse than some irritated hair follicles or a summer cold, though, seemed improbable at the time.

Symptoms from MRSA typically begin with painful, pimple-looking bumps that are warm to the touch. Community-associated MRSA can spread more easily among athletes like skateboarders, who are frequently dotted with open wounds from previous falls.

In Mullins’ case, doctors confirmed he had severe MRSA necrotizing pneumonia with acute respiratory distress syndrome. Mullins also had severe hypoxemia — meaning he was oxygen-deficient — and hypercarbia, or abnormally elevated levels of carbon dioxide in his blood, in addition to acute kidney injury and septic shock.

Dr. Robert Hyzy, medical director of the critical care medicine unit with U-M’s health system, remembers seeing Mullins improve and thinking that doctors had won the case. They brought Mullins out of sedation and realized he couldn’t see.

Though loss of sight isn’t a common outcome of MRSA, Hyzy said it could have been a result of bacterial blood traveling to his retinal artery.

“When he lost his vision, I thought he might not be able to skateboard,” Hyzy said.

The comeback

In 2009, Mullins was skating nonstop, and professional skateboarding companies were beginning to notice. They sent him products, which is like a nudge to keep skating — produce more, and people will be watching.

Mullins said he was never into skateboarding to become big, though he did want to do it for the rest of his life. After he finished up his video part and threw it online with Staffan, the plan was to move out to California that fall.

He had been working up to that move for years.

Mullins said he found skateboarding when he was about 10, while growing up in the Toledo area. He tried everything else that was part of skate park culture, too: inline skating and BMX biking were in the fray. Something about skateboarding just stuck.

Jimmy Mullins said he realized his son had become dedicated when he started winning competition after competition. Nick Mullins was also driving up to Michigan regularly to visit Modern Skate & Surf and the now-closed Oakland Vert Skatepark.

Things with the sponsor-me tape were fast-tracked after Mullins became sick. Many skateboarders didn’t know exactly what had happened, just that he might die. Staffan took a summer’s worth of footage and quickly edited Mullins’ tape and put it online.

The video wound up becoming an impromptu eulogy to Mullins’ rising career when friends weren’t sure whether he would survive. It went viral and was posted to the Berrics — a successful skateboarding website that mostly features professional clips and was founded by skateboarders Steve Berra and Eric Koston — and soon garnered attention across the county. Mullins said he didn’t fully understand at the time just how well-known his name had become.

He did know, though, that the Berrics and others were raising money for his hospital bills and were selling merchandise that said “1%” — Mullins’ initial survival rate. They wanted to see him come back.

A few weeks after he got out of the hospital, Staffan filmed an interview with Mullins and posted it to YouTube. Mullins is skinny and pallid in the video. The song from his Berrics debut, Metric’s “Help I’m Alive,” plays in the background.

One title slide reads: Steve Berra and the Berrics have been a big part of making your story known, anything you want to say to them?

“You guys helped out and everything,” Mullins said. “Thank you so much, I wish I could do something for you guys. Just, thank you.”

He said he’d be back on a skateboard within three to six months. A few videos on YouTube seemed to prove that he kept his word and showed him skating around local parks. Then he moved to Phoenix, Ariz., and then to Traverse City, and people didn’t hear from him for a while. Staffan, 30, of Toledo, said e-mails kept flowing in: Where's Nick? Is he alive? Can he see?

"What was really weird was that it was like a reality show. All these rumors got started," Staffan said. "It was like Nick was a celebrity and I was like his publicist."

In 2014, Mullins posted his own video.

“I’m Nick Mullins, I’m 23 years old, and I’m considered legally blind,” he told the camera, smiling and wearing sunglasses.

“I took a short break from skateboarding,” he added. “Now I’m back skating, having a lot of fun. Skateboarding every day, staying positive and happy.”

It was a tough road to get there. Mullins said his legs felt like he was “carrying cinder blocks” when he started skating again, but he didn't really feel pain anymore. He was all bone, no muscle. Just standing on his skateboard was challenging at first.

His next move, he said, was to drop in on a 3½-foot miniature ramp near his home. That would prove he could come back. About 10 of his friends came to cheer him on.

“I dropped in I made it to the other side, and that’s when they were like, ‘He’s going to get it back. He just dropped in blind,’” Mullins said.

Then Mullins was making bounds forward to return to his roots. He took his skateboard to a half-pipe. He relearned what tricks he could, and then they started “flowing in like a stream,” he said. He started hosting skateboard competitions again.

It helped to be surrounded by a community of skateboarders who wanted to see Mullins pull through and succeed — whether that be at Modern Skate, or other skate parks across the country.

Hometown hero

Leichtweis said Mullins has become somewhat of a regional legend. Sometimes people forget he’s blind when they see him skate, or at least think he’s regained his sight.

Friends and family drive Mullins the 45 minutes to Modern Skate two or three times a week in the winter. Leichtweis asks him not to pay to skate.

“I tell people, ‘Go up this ramp and close your eyes and drop in.’ Nobody would do that,” he said. “He’s become quite a legend around here because he’s very talented, and he didn’t allow his issues with not seeing to inhibit the way he looks at life. That alone shows an example to all the younger kids here.”

The 16-year-old skateboarder manning the front desk of Modern said he’s almost intimidated to talk to Mullins, adding that he’s a hometown hero.

Skateboarding for Mullins, though, is not about being good. It's about staying on your board. Maybe in the future, Mullins said, he'll travel the county and talk to other skateboards and let them know that they can overcome their self-doubts and anxieties, too. Or he could own a clothing company, he said, and "give back to the community."

After believing he was about to die — and then that he might never skate again — Mullins said it took a lot to get back on his feet. He was depressed and anxious. He was lying in bed one day feeling like he would become overwhelmed and cry, and then he began to laugh. He couldn't believe that he was being mopey, he says.

"You lost your vision, you still have your arms and legs," Mullins said. "Just get up and live."